 Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Asperger's Growth Channel. I can tell you that there is something different today, and you probably know it. I've got demon eyes, I will eat your soul. All jokes aside, yes I do have a new camera, and I also have a very bright light in my face, hence the demon eyes. I can't say that the bright light is very comfortable, but it makes for some good video quality, and I'm doing it for you, so you can see my face at a high resolution. Why would you want to do that? So the topic of today's video is a little bit of a, I know I don't want to say the word update, because everyone is going to click off as soon as I say the word update, but it's more of news in terms of what's going on in my life. I have obviously been very overworked and overwhelmed during sort of coming after Christmas and working as a special needs teacher right now, so I'm working until about half free every day, and then it takes me about an hour and a half to get home because the traffic lights are busted in my parts, and then I've got about an hour and a half before I go to boxing, so there's a lot of things to do. I've been podcasting a lot, I've been following up some emails, talking to some other people, and there are some exciting things to come this year, but I'm not going to divulge them quite yet, because not too sure, not too sure yet. I'm hoping that I can keep it going alongside the YouTube, alongside the boxing, alongside the jobs. The main thing that I really want to talk about today is my mood, my anxiety, my depression, specifically the changes in medications that I'm having recently. For anybody who has been about my channel for a long time, you know, you'll know that I do have a lot of medications I take about, I think I'm up to about three or four now, and my doctor's really trying to pinpoint exactly what type of medication will help my depression. Now I was initially on Phloxatein, then I moved to metazepine, which is more of a sort of anxiety-related thing with a little bit of serotonin mixed in, but I was still feeling fairly depressed and down, and although, you know, since my grandad's passing and since a lot of the other stuff that's happened in my life, I've sort of given up the idealistic sort of glorifying of, it sounds strange, but, you know, like suicide and self-harm and stuff, and I found it really difficult, so I decided to go back onto another medication, so I was on two. Started with sertraline, was on 50, wasn't really having much of an effect, moved up to 100. Good was starting to feel a bit more like it was working, not to the extent that would make me content and happy with life, but it was better. So we moved up to 150, and that's when all the problems started happening. I was absolutely torturous. I had some very bad panic attack symptoms from the sertraline, and it didn't matter what time of day I took it, I would always start, you know, my cortisol, my anxiety would start rising about six or seven, no matter what I was doing, just completely, every single night out of the blue, and it would just peak into a panic attack until about 10 or 11 at night, and it was intolerable, honestly, and although the effects on my mood, my general mood were good, I mean, not brilliant, but probably one of, you know, the best sort of medications that I've been on before, I couldn't stand the side effects, and the side effects were just too horrific and just debilitating and, ugh, yeah, really interfered with sleep and stuff, and, you know, I don't really have a lot of time to sleep, so it wasn't particularly good. So I've been sort of tapering off my sertraline from 150 to 100 these past two weeks, and on Wednesday I'm going to be going down again to 50 and then zero, but I can definitely tell that it's having quite a big impact on my mood. Everything just feels a bit more fatalistic, a bit more, you know, like brown glasses, I'm trying not to use the word for, the expletive word for poop, but yeah, it's just everything just feels rubbish again, it's hard, it is really hard, and the hardest thing is knowing that I've got to go down another two doses, you know, I'm only back to 100 now, and even 100 combined with metazapine tends to be quite a lot, it's not enough for me, and it is impacting my mood, and I'm trying to keep myself up above water, and doing all these things with the podcast and talking to companies to do a vortism and stuff has helped me be a bit more positive about my future, and I've had some really, you know, some good news in this past month, but it just doesn't seem to have as much of an effect on me. I don't feel happy about it, I just feel like it's just going to go to rubbish, and I know it isn't, and it's just, you know, my low serotonin talking, but it doesn't take away from the feeling, like the feeling that you just get in your body, that null, buzzing, depressing feeling that just sucks the joy out of anything, just makes everything just feel, any negative thing just feel much more intense, so there's a lot of buzz over there, I'll just turn off. Turn off, boy! Don't need your buzzing right now. I'm doing YouTube-ing. I don't know how I'm going to react to taking, being taken off, like the full medication, I suspect pretty badly. I'm going to be put on to a different medication as soon as I drop down to zero, which is a SSRI called Sitalopram, which is sort of, it's not, it's not as much, like prescribed nowadays, but it's still a popular antidepressant drug, and there is someone in my family who uses it as well, and it has had quite good results, so I'm hoping, I'm hoping that this sort of genetic link will make it so that, you know, Sitalopram is the thing that will lift me up and not give me as many side effects, but all I can do is try. It's really hard, like, when just feeling, just feeling terrible is all that you know. I'm not, I'm not being exagerative. Yeah, I do have maybe like periods of time where I feel great and fine and, well, those are so rare. And I, the only times that I can remember that I felt honestly content and happy, not anxious, not depressed was, you know, I can't even remember. Maybe at school, but even then I was bullied and there's so much just negative emotion just brewing up and just brewed up inside of me. I don't even know, I don't even know to what extent that what's me and what's, you know, mental illness, I just don't know. It's just, it's been there at a very high degree all the time for most of my adult life, all of my adult life. I've done fun things, I've done exciting things, I've passed university, I've done well at my sport, but I still just feel ridiculously empty. I am positive and, you know, that's one of the, I'm very much a stoic because I've recently been told, but it's more of a mindset. It's like my logical brain knows what's happening and knows what I have to do. And I go through the day sort of trying to distract myself from this aching, horrible, terrible mood in this black hole inside of me. Trying to do regular things, you know, going through difficulties and interacting with people, put an effort into work, trying to keep spin plates while I just feel like my soul is just being sucked. I don't even, I don't even honestly feel like myself if I'm not like us. So I just, I just don't know what it feels like. It feels so alien to me, the concept of feeling happy and being positive and not positive, but feeling happy and not feeling stressed. I can feel good, I can feel mildly content with life, but my anxiety can be shooting up to the sky. Whereas on the other hand, I can be not anxious at all, very relaxed, still just find no pleasure in it at all. It's just, it is really difficult and it's really hard because I know that there's so many good things that are happening to me and I know that my efforts are paying off. Just in all ways, it's just, it's not any kind of, like even this low amount, even dropping down to 100, I can already feel it coming back and it's just, it's just soul destroying, just knowing that this is only a third of it. And I very much think of other people and I don't want to affect anybody, my loved ones and my friends and I don't affect people. You know, I sort of shut myself off and I isolate myself when I feel like I'm going to be a burden on people. But it still doesn't, you know, take away from the fact that I'm just a big sort of, my presence is just a black hole. I feel like that. I know it's probably not, but it does make you feel like that. I have recently been chatting to someone who sort of said that my YouTube, my YouTube personality is different to the reality. And I'd say that to some extent that would be true. You know, I very much exaggerate my positive emotions when I'm on camera. It's not fake. I do enjoy talking and I do enjoy talking to you guys and knowing that you're hearing me and knowing that you're getting something from it. I enjoy bringing people up and making their life better. But no, I'm sort of, I'm at the point where I know that what's wrong with me is just my brain. It's just my neurotransmitters, just my the chemicals and hormones that are going around me. And it's sad. It's what you're supposed to do when you've done everything else, when you've sorted everything else out. And I worked on my relationships with my family, my friends. I traveled. I go out now and again. I work on my things. I play games with my brother. I exercise. I, all right. I try and get a good amount of sleep and often do. I drink water. I take supplements. I have CBD. You know, there's not really much else that I can do. And that's, you know, one of the sad parts about mental illness up until a point. Sometimes it's just genetic to an extent. I think having bad genetics sort of makes you susceptible to having bad life experiences. If you're depressed and negative and sad at young age, you're going to be like that with other people. You're not going to feel very confident and positive. So you're going to, you're going to have terrible times at school and in young adult life, maybe even adult life. But I feel like I've taken that component away from myself. I've distanced myself. I've got over it. I've really sort of mulled it over and figured it out and sorted myself out. But there's just always that background anxiety, that background black hole that's just sucking everything that's positive out of my life. It's like I can see it, but I can't feel it. I can see that it's positive. And I can see that I should be happy, but I'm not. I am to a certain extent, but not near to the degree that I should be. If I receive some good news I'm supposed to celebrate, go easy on myself. I don't, I just, I maybe feel a bit of elation for about five or 10 minutes and then it's gone. I did, I did want to make this video, but you know there's been a few times where I've posted things like this and I've sort of worried you guys and I don't want to, I don't want to worry you because I will press on. That's what I do. I do push on and I do get free things. It's just, it's just, I'm just having a hard time and I do want to share this because initially this was what my channel was about. It was about sharing me and my emotions and my struggles and although that just sound quite, you know, sort of egotistical to think that people would want to listen to me about me talking about how bad I have it. There's enough people doing that, I feel. But it just, I just, I just want to let you know how I feel. I don't want to, I want to address the fact that, you know, I am positive my videos and happy and that's because I want to, I want to present it in the best way. I want to present the autism stuff as a separate part of mental, to mental health. I don't want to just, you know, sit on camera and mope around and have a sort of depressing low voice like I do now. So, so I exaggerate and, yeah, it makes me feel happy doing it and I do feel more sort of bubbly and joyful and positive and talkative afterwards. So it is genuine. Let's mess that up. It is genuine. It is, I promise. But for the most of the time, I'm not like that. For the most of the time, I do struggle. I just want, want anybody else out there who feels somewhat similar. I know it's hard to convey emotion through video and audio and to convey emotion in general, to be honest. But I do, I do hope that, you know, that the difficulties that I have sort of comes across. I do have a tendency of minimising just how bad I feel. And that's just because life, I don't want to depress people. I'll make them feel bad. It's just been going on for so long. So long. I don't know when it will end. But I'll keep trying. And if it doesn't end, I'm sticking around. I'm trying to do something about. I'm trying to help other people. That's what keeps me going. And you guys, you, you're one of the reasons why I'm keeping going. You're supporting me even just in small amounts. You're supporting me a major amount. Giving me opportunities. You're watching and supporting and commenting. And it's not about the numbers or anything. It's just about feeling, what is that? What is that? Brother. It's a bit of a... It's digging away in the kitchen. It's just, yeah, sorry. It's just about feeling appreciated. And I do, I do look at those comments. And even if I don't reply with a long message, I do genuinely feel a lot of contentness and that I'm doing something good when I get those. And that's all that really matters to me. I will get better and I will push through it. I know it. I always do. No matter how bad I feel. No matter on what scale of depression I am. Whether I'm 5 or 10 or 100 out of 10 in terms of feeling bad. Still going to push through. So thanks. Thanks for helping me. And I hope that, you know, this video doesn't put you off listening to what I say and listening to the ways that you can cope with it yourself. I hope that me being strong is inspiring you to be strong no matter what you feel like. No matter what place you are in the world. No matter what you've done. No matter how alone or bad or even happy or content you feel. I hope that in some way I can inspire you to push through it as well. I do follow what I say in my videos. And I do strongly believe in them. And they're all things that I believe help a lot. They help me from the comments that I receive. I'm sure that it helps other people as well. So I do want to emphasize that. Just watch my videos. I've been rambling for too long. I'm going to let you go. I will be uploading another video this week. Hopefully. Fingers crossed if Wednesday goes alright in the following days. But you know, the podcast still be up. The podcast is being up. There's one going up next Saturday. If you want to go check it out and follow me on Spotify. It's up to you. I do need to make a podcast on depression. I've done one on autism and anxiety and a lot of autism related things. But I'm hoping to sort of branch out into different areas that match what my channel is about I suppose. Just in a more casual way. I'm enjoying it a lot. Talking to people. Getting people's opinions. It's very nice. So if you have any spare time, maybe you're doing some shows or anything, just come along. Come along and listen to me talking your ears. Weird. You're a weirdo. Why listen to me in your ears? Strange. Another human being producing sounds with his voice and with his vocal cords and resonating them into a microphone which is then processed. And then it's funneled into your ear with processed waveforms. So you can hear me in the future. Hope you guys are doing good and I'll hopefully talk to you soon. Watch this space. You're like my second family and you're awesome. So see you later.